(click on each term to see a list of organisms commonly found with that characteristic):
- Aerotope: Gas vesicle
- Akinete: Thick-walled enveloped cell, often granular in appearance, exclusive to heterocyst-forming cyanobacteria; Can be indicative of age and environmental conditions
- Colony: Loose to dense aggregation or conglomeration of the same organism (as opposed to a mat, which is composed of a variety of organisms)
- Heterocyst: Differentiated cell associated with nitrogen fixation, often unpigmented and lacking the granular pattern found in akinetes
- Sheath: Extracellular polysaccharide and/or mucilaginous secretion that envelopes specific cyanobacterial filaments
- Hormogonia: A motile dispersal form of a filamentous cyanobacteria
- Mat: Loose to dense community, aggregation, or conglomeration that may include a variety of organisms